Nyctophobia
by Whack-the-beetle
Summary: She feared the night because in the darkness he came. If only she hadn't been such a rotten coward, she would have - and should have - killed herself long ago, before she listened to any more of his honey-coated lies, but in a moment of weakness even the tainted, snaring words of a foe can offer treacherous consolation. Gift-fic for Morgul-Squirrel.


**This was originally the first chapter of a story that will probably never be written at this stage, and so I decided to polish it up a little bit and post it as a creepy, little short-story.**

 **For Morgul-Squirrel the ever talented, as a hommage to her amazing story 'Rolling in the Deep.' Happy Halloween.**

 **Disclaimer: Do not own anything.  
**

* * *

Slowly and carefully she uncovered the wound on the soldier's abdomen that had been haphazardly wrapped with a stained and dirty bandage. Immediately the sickly sweet smell of gangrenous flesh hit her nose and mingled with the stench of pus, blood and sickness that pervaded the room.  
The cloth stuck to the ragged edges of the inflamed and oozing gash, and even tough her hands were gentle she elicited a moan of pain from the man with every tug.  
Nothing to be done about it - the cloth needed to come off, and the pain was unavoidable.

Finally the wound was laid bare and she could inspect it more closely. It was a long and deep cut that reached all the way from the man's ribcage to the pubic bone, straight across the left side of his abdomen.  
It probably stemmed from a sword thrust by the looks of it, and the blade had cut straight through skin and muscle, revealing deeper tissue, and in some places the faint pink shimmer of the peritoneum.  
The gaping edges were shrivelled and dried, caked with old blood and dirt. The wound stank and was clearly infected, but at least there were no maggots.

No maggots was good.  
One could get used to a lot over time, but never really to a wound infested by the foul critters, or the nauseating task of having to pick them out, one by one, with a pair of tweezers.  
She remembered how Hessua and the others had laughed when she had first come upon a maggoty lesion.  
Unprepared and unsuspecting, she had cut through the bandages, only to be faced by a writhing mass of pale white tubers. The stench had been something different, and when it had hit her nose she had reeled right back and vomited profusely into a bucket nearby.

No maggots to be found on this one though.  
She permitted herself a small and inaudible sigh of relief.  
Still, the cut was deep, and her probing fingers had fallen right trough the tissue in two places, encountering warm and moist entrails.  
More likely than not this one would die - once the peritoneum was breached the case was practically hopeless - but she would give it a try all the same.

She proceeded to wash out the dirty wound.  
Thankfully, the young soldier had fainted some time ago, once she had started to poke and probe through his festering flesh.  
All the better for him - and for her - she hated having to tend to patients that were thrashing and screaming in pain, variously begging her to stop, to kill them, or curse her and her entire family for the torment she was inflicting on them.

Once the gash was tolerably clean, she applied copious amounts of a pungent, green ointment and wrapped the wound in fresh bandages. Regrettably, the cut was too old to be stitched, meaning that the soldier was in for a long recovery time until the wound healed over. That is if he survived the first few days, which was highly unlikely at this point.  
Sniffling from the sharp and bitter stench of the salve, she walked over to the basin to wash her blood stained hands and grab some fresh water.

She trudged back to the young man's side and started to peel him out of his torn and ragged clothes. Wrinkling her nose at the smell of unwashed body that hit her squarely in the face, she deftly started to clean the dirt-encrusted limbs.  
The sight of the naked male body spread out before her hardly registered anymore - modesty and decorum had been cast away long ago, like so many other things.

Dabbing her cloth at the man's flushed and sweaty face - he was clearly developing a fever already – she properly noted his appearance for the first time.  
He was very young this one, barely more than eighteen or twenty at the most she reckoned. There was only a fine down of light hair on his cheeks and upper lip, and his features still retained something childish and innocent in his sleep.  
He had fair hair, and the eyes that had briefly fluttered open at the touch of the cool rag on his forehead were a washed-out shade of icy blue.

She could have mistaken him for one of her own folk, had not his facial traits been distinctly foreign. His eyes were slanted, narrow and crushed by the prominent cheekbones, and then she had never encountered eyes of such a pale, fishy colour amongst her own people.  
He probably hailed from some distant country far east and north, but what false promises or threats had convinced him to fight for the Dark Lord so far away from his homeland she could not imagine.

He was an enemy, like everyone else here, but his fair features sparked a fleeting, uncalled-for feeling of kinship and an uncomfortable pang of homesickness.  
She quickly stifled the emotions - the day was long still and she could not allow herself to go to pieces now.  
There was still plenty of time to wallow in self-pity and bitter thoughts during the long hours of the night.

Having completed her ministrations, she called on the others to help her move him. He was given a cot in a distant corner, and was for the moment left to his own devices.  
She would look after him later, even if it only meant to keep him company before his soul departed from his ravaged body.

Letting out a tired sigh, she wiped the sweat from her brow and surveyed the room, looking for her next task.  
She groaned inwardly – the infirmary was an absolute mess after the arrival of another batch of wounded this morning. The tables were covered in gore and filth, instruments and dirty rags swimming in the unpleasant puddles, and the floor was splattered with blood, vomit and brackish water.  
Everything would have to be cleaned up, preferably before Hessua came to inspect the surgery and found fault with the state of things.

How she hated the pedantic little man and his sneering, disdainful arrogance.  
As far as he was concerned, everyone here was beneath him, uncouth heathens not worth his time and notice. Being a woman though, she was worth even less in his eyes, and the lowest in the established pecking order – a fact the others had been quick to pick up on, and as a result the most unpleasant tasks were more often than not foisted upon her.

She squared her shoulders and started to tidy up.  
Hessua was a proper slave driver and a stickler for cleanliness alright, but even she could admit that he hadn't earned his post as the healer in charge for nothing.  
His knowledge was profound, and often his to her strange and new methods worked miracles in patients she would have heretofore given up as lost causes.  
She couldn't really fault him for his obsession with cleanliness either – clearly it was the only sensible thing to do if one wanted to avoid infection and the spread of contagious diseases - still, at the thought of his haughty, emaciated features and the slightly nasal twang of his ever complaining voice she reflexively gripped the rag more tightly, wishing with all her heart that she could shove it up his crooked nose.

By the time she was done her back was aching and she was covered in sweat.  
It was the height of summer, or whatever pale mockery of summer came to this cursed valley. It had nothing in common with the long and balmy days full of sunshine and laughter she remembered from her home country.  
Here the sun never penetrated the thick mists that constantly hung over the valley caged in by mountains, not even in summer. The lengthening of the days had only brought on an oppressive mugginess that hadn't dissipated in weeks, and not a gust of wind disturbed the sickly, humid fog that pressed down on them like a sticky bell cover.

Late afternoon was the worst time. When the last remnants of chill night air had fled the rooms, giving way to the stench and warmth of countless unwashed bodies and decaying flesh, the stagnant air became so stuffy that breathing was hard work, and her head felt dull and fogged.  
And when the yells and groans of pain from the injured permeated the stifling heat, she was at times convinced that she was in hell.  
True hell, like the purging fire her Nana had told her about, where the souls of evil people went to in afterlife to be cleaned from their sins.

Nana. She felt another sharp stab of desperation at the thought of her grandmother and mentally berated herself for the lapse - it did do no good to dwell on the past here, it only brought on more pain.

Years and years she had been held captive here now. Years she didn't care to count anymore. Years full of blood, sweat and tears. Years that already felt like a lifetime trapped in purgatory, where nothing but pain, fear and exhaustion existed.  
An endless lament of misery and hard work, and there was no hope that it would ever be otherwise again, for surely there was no escaping the darkness and torture of Minas Morgul.

* * *

In the darkness he came, in the small hours of the morning.  
Darkness he was himself, and darkness rose up to greet him.  
Cold and dread flew on the tails of his cloak, surrounding him and preceding him like a cloud of twilight carrion birds.

Where he passed the patients grew restless, thrashed and moaned in their fitful slumbers, their drugged, poppy-seed induced dreams suddenly turning into savage nightmares. Candles burned lower, and shadows deepened and grew with every heavy step of his iron boot.

The chattering of her teeth woke her up.  
She jerked awake from a light doze slumped over the side of the young soldier's bed, and through her gummy eyelids she saw him advance, an abhorrent black figure gliding through the half-light gloom, and the hair on her naked, gooseflesh-covered arms stood on end.  
The coldness should have been welcome in the putrid heat, but it refreshed nothing. Insidiously and poisonously it slunk underneath her skin, paralysing nerve and muscle, and leaving her sick and frozen to the marrow.

Closer he came, the clanking of his metal-clad feet the only noise in the sepulchral silence of the infirmary.  
He stopped in front of her; and the candle on the nightstand guttered and went out.  
With an effort she straightened herself, one clammy hand flying to the back of her neck to knead the knotted muscles there.

"Judging by thy silent vigil, this one wilt not live to see the morrow."

As he spoke, the young soldier tossed and turned in his sleep, throwing his head from side to side on his pillow. She put a hand on his forehead to calm him down, tenderly stroking back his sweat-drenched hair from his face.

She wanted to deny that fell and cruel voice, wanted to tell him that he was mistaken, that the young man in the bed next to her would recover, and that he had come in vain.

"His pulse is flat and high, and the extremities have started to go cold approximately an hour ago," she said mechanically.

"Then it is as I thought."

"Yes."  
She left a last, loving caress linger over the soldier's face before she turned away, hands falling heavily and uselessly into her lap.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a black shape swoop down on the bed, and she cowardly buried her nose into her shoulder - she didn't want to see this, didn't need to see this.

The darkness around the bed consolidated into something almost solid, and the air turned deadly cold, causing her short gasps of breath to sublimate into ghostly puffs of mist before her eyes.  
Shivering violently, she pressed a hand against her ear – she didn't want to listen either - but even through the fleshy plug of her palm she could hear the muffled, eerie sniffling and the young man's stifled, agonized sob, and then – silence.

If she had wanted to exculpate herself, she would have said that it was mercy. Why extend a life, why drag out the suffering of one who was doomed to die anyway?  
But there was nobody here to accuse her, and so she could admit to herself at least what it was - nothing but rank cowardice.  
And murder.

He drew himself up, a towering, abyssal shadow looming over her balled-up form.  
"Thou hast proved thyself valuable," he said, his spectral voice stronger and more sonorous than before.

"Yes, and a whole lot of good has that done to me."  
She glared at him from under her premature eternal frown, letting all of her hatred and bitterness bleed into that one sentence.

To her astonishment he only laughed, a foul and mocking chuckle, more grating on her ears than the hissed threats she had come to expect.  
"It was thy choice, was it not? Hast thou tired of thy services to me?"

"And what if I have?" she challenged, jutting out her chin defiantly.

"'It would do thee no good if thou hadst," he said unconcernedly, the vestiges of his amusement still seeping through his deep voice.

"I gathered as much," she snorted. "But what will you do if I refuse to be utilized by you? Will you punish me? Kill me? Either way that won't bring back your faithful little servant, and death would only be a release at this stage – I would welcome it - so what hold do you have on me?"

"Thou thinkest thyself shrewd and hopest to gain leverage over me, but thy mind is narrow indeed if thou thinkest that thou hast already seen and experienced all the torment that can be inflicted on thee. Thou hast tasted but a small sip from the well of endless torture Minas Morgul has to offer, and thou art a fool if thou believest that death would be thy chosen punishment."

She tilted her head to the side, shooting him a sly glance from under one raised eyebrow.  
"I could always bring it about myself, you know."

He brushed her off with a dismissive wave of a metal-gauntleted hand.  
"Empty threats. If thou hadst the will or the courage to do it, thou wouldst have done it long ago."

She pressed her lips together – he was accusing her of being weak-willed and cowardly – and he wasn't wrong.

"Thou dost not want to die," he added softly.

Something about that sat uncomfortably with her, and to give herself something to do, she got up and put her fingers on the young soldier's throat. No pulse, and his skin felt unnaturally cool to the touch. She irritably jerked the sheet loose from under the arms that were already turning rigid, and pulled it over his head.

Fussing with the sheet for a moment she stalled, thinking.  
"And how do you know that?" she asked him finally.

He took a step closer. Coldness reached out and wrapped itself around her back.  
Alarmed muscles twitched and tensed, cramping and screaming in protest.

"Because thou and I art very much alike."  
His gelid breath blew against the fine down of hair at the back of her neck, and she pulled up her shoulders reflexively, shuddering.

She wheeled around, suddenly furious.  
"Don't you dare!" she spat into the empty hood only a foot from her face.  
"Don't you dare compare yourself to me! We are nothing alike, and will never be. I may be a prisoner, and I may be a recreant, weak and self-serving. But you are a hideous monster, heartless, soulless and cruel. A perverse wraith creature, neither dead nor alive, enslaved by a master you were too weak to refuse when he threw out his nets of beguilement and deception. You are an abomination and an insult to all living things, and I would rather suffer every agony possible and die ten times over than end up like you!"

Lightning-quick his hand shot out and grabbed her by her plaited hair, iron fingertips scraping against her scalp as he tightened his grip. Mercilessly, he tugged her head backwards until her spine felt close to snapping, forcing her to look straight into the fell glitter of his eyes.

"Is that so?" he hissed. "Keep insulting me, and thou mayest yet get thy wish."

A wave of dread surged, broke and rolled over her. Icy fear bubbled up in her blood and washed through her veins, freezing mind, heart and limbs.  
She stared up at him like the hare before the snake, incapacitated by her own terror and the chokehold he had on her.

He let got of her braid, and she gurgled and took a step back, realizing that he had her nicely trapped when the back of her legs bumped against the bed-frame behind her.

"So thou fanciest thyself ever so noble and incorruptible? Superior even? Thinkest me flawed and weak-spirited for accepting my master's gift when the very same desire has landed thee in thy current position? Wert not thou thyself so desperate to survive and anxious for the betterment of thy situation that thou wert even willing to barter with me? It seems to me 'tis is the pot calling the kettle black.  
Thou mayst lie to thyself as much as thou wishest, but the truth is that thou art so scared of death that thou wouldst sacrifice anything and anyone to avoid it."

"That's not true."  
She hated that her voice came out pressed and tremulous – she hadn't wanted him to know that his words had hit their mark.  
"I am not afraid," she asserted obstinately.

"No? So thou art not afraid? Then why dost thou keep vigil night after night next to the beds of thy dying patients rather than seek repose from the strains and hardships of a day's labour in sleep? I'll tell thee why – because thou art so scared of the dark that thou preferest to forego thy rest if only thou must not face the demons that come and haunt thee every night."

"The only demon that comes to haunt me at night is you," she scoffed in a brave attempt to diffuse the intensity of the situation, "and I have a duty towards my patients."

"No," he breathed, leaning closer still until she could feel the rough wool of his hood brushing against her face.  
"In the dark hours of the night, when the shadows close in on thee and thou feelest so lonely as if thou wert the only person left on the whole of Arda, that is when thy demons come out. And thou fearest them – guilt and bitter regret gnawing at thy innards like venomous rats, and the faces of all those thou hast forsaken and betrayed to safe thy own selfish hide. They do not let thee rest, do they? They accuse thee endlessly of thy crimes until thou hast naught left but shame and desperation."

He lifted a hand to her face as if to cup her cheek, but didn't touch her.  
"Yes, thou art so afraid of the night that thou dost not want to fall asleep because the torment of thy thoughts is still better than the nightmares that would plague thee. And thou dost not want to die because thou fearest the scourging hellish fire that awaits thee for all thy sins."

A single crystal tear pooled under her lid and escaped over the corner of her eye.  
"Don't, please - no more," she pleaded brokenly, choking on the acid lump in her throat.

He dropped his hand, and watched her silent struggle not to cry.

"I could offer thee freedom," he said after a pause.

She shook her head resignedly.  
"I will never be free anymore. I am chained to this place until I die, and then, as you rightly say, I will have to pay for my sins. There will be no freedom."

"Mayhap, but if thou couldst choose, wouldst thou not want to leave this city, be rid of the toil of thy duties and walk free under the sun of the world again?"  
He gestured to the window behind them, and his tone was compelling, crawling underneath her skin with reptilian seductiveness despite his ghastly gruesome voice.

She turned and walked past him towards the window.  
"I would," she admitted, gazing onto the roiling mists down in the valley where the black shadows of night slowly turned to the grey of an early dawn. "And you could enable it?"

"I could, indeed. If thou so wished even thy nightmares shall not torment thee any longer, and darkness shall become a friend to thee once more," he affirmed.

His words hung between them while she traced a crack in the glass of the window with her finger.  
"'Tis a tempting offer, I must admit. What would you want in exchange for it though?" she asked slowly.

"Obedience," he said, and she never saw the light glinting off the blade that came down on her unprotected back.


End file.
